SOCIAL SPACE OF DIGITAL MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS: A MULTILEVEL MODEL OF MEMES DIFFUSION

Media communications are considered in various dimensions: social space, social networks, personal space. Researchers of social networks therefore, discovered a social phenomenon appearing as a result of the combined use of several Internet applications, in contrast to communications in the “early Internet”, which had very limited opportunities for interactive communication. The modern Web 2.0 network provides the ability to autonomously generate and publish various types of materials by those who have access to the network, by integrating the capabilities of blogs, social networks and other tools. In the context of such generation there are considered social technologies of content production and consumption based on the theory of prosumerism. In the communicative model, a prosumer is a communicant who takes an active part in the production and consumption of a particular content (including the production of meaningful information for its own use). The sequence of operations applied in this case allows to optimize the use of various elements of the surrounding media environment (as a kind of social environment) is a technology of affordance, which is offered in the author’s interpretation.

The generated content is considered in the form of a unit of cultural information called a meme. Meme (from Ancient Greek “mimetes” — “imitator”). The term “meme” is widely used in social networks to describe an information item that is disseminated through communication between people on social networks. Memetics is knowledge based on the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin, which is at the intersection of pseudoscience and science, since the theory of coding cultural and behavioral information in memes cannot be confirmed by research, tests and experiments. Memes are the cultural counterpart of genes, referring to any reproducible messages that convey cultural information from individual to individual.

Research objectives. To define the role of media communication that saturate the social space, as well as ways of spreading new meanings in the digital space through a unit of information (called a meme), which is transmitted through communication between people in social networks, as well as consider the features of the formation of a multi-level model of meme diffusion.

Methods. In the networked space, technological and social changes merge, various spheres hybridize with each other. The formation of new media communications requires a combination of methods of working with various content: digitalization (dematerialization of images, sounds, documents); convergence (different types of content are brought together on one platform); determination of the communication vector (unlike traditional media, digital media are not unidirectional and centralized); hypertextualization (content is distributed nonlinearly, but it can be personalized); social dynamics record(the manifestation of the relevant content fragments on Facebook, Twitter or other networks is considered); enabling interactions (users have the ability to interact with the content).

Conclusion. The social space of media communications, formed on the platform of the “second generation Internet — Web 2.0”, consists of such major platforms for publishing content as Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, other social networks, services (for example, Wikipedia), portals for posting photos, audio or video. The main idea of these tools is the ability to interact with other users or receive content that enriches the Internet experience. At the same time, it is argued that units of cultural information are subject to mutual diffusion on platforms of different levels. These prerequisites allow us to say that such communication develops its metacommunicative and relative aspect and leaves the instrument of reflection in the background. The Web 2.0 user is undergoing a transformation, turning from a simple spectator to a director, and new media, in fact, contribute to the development of a sense of belonging or, under certain circumstances, the opposite state — alienation and isolation. Thus, humanity is entering a new evolutionary stage where everything becomes instrumental: user participation, use and transformation of content based on combination with units of information (memes).

Keywords: social space, media communications, meme, diffusion of memes